Business insurance premiums may be on the rise in 2012, but that may not necessarily be a bad thing.

If business premiums start to creep up, that usually is an indication that a company’s exposure to risk is greater because the company is healthier.

“It means more business activity — more sales and more payroll means more exposure,” said James R. Lumbra Sr., president of Maitland-based LRA Insurance.

Companies saw their premiums fall this year because there were fewer employees, commercial property values were lower and there was less property to insure because companies cut vehicles and other expenses.

Should businesses begin to shop around as their premiums rise, they may find their pool of choices shrinking as larger insurance carriers concentrate on those companies writing the bulk of the business.

“Insurance carriers prefer to have a greater concentration of business with a fewer number of agencies,” said Jim Henderson, senior vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer of Lake Mary-based AssuredPartners Inc., which paired with a Chicago-based private equity firm to acquire insurance agencies.

Banking & Finance

Expansion may be the key word for Central Florida banks in 2012.

Although larger banks, including Fifth Third Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and others, have ambitious expansion plans, so do some community banks.

Winter Park-based BankFirst, which has seven branches in Central Florida, is looking from Tampa to Jacksonville and on to Stuart for banks to bring into its fold. The bank, which according to the latest Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data has assets of $614.8 million, wants to become a $1 billion to $2 billion institution.

“We’ve been preparing for this opportunity for the past three years,” said Donald J. McGowan, bank president and CEO.

Another bank with eyes on expansion in Central Florida is Boca Raton-based 1st United Bank, which announced in October it was paying $37 million for Palm Harbor-based Anderen Financial, which has a branch in Orlando. It has its sights set on another location in downtown Orlando or Seminole County.

FDIC-assisted transactions — where the FDIC takes over a failed bank and brokers a deal with another bank to assume the failed institution — may continue to decline, but still will number between 10 and 20 deals in 2012, said John Warren, president of Anderen, who has been involved in several bank startups.

When that pace slows, there will be more mergers and acquisitions among banks and small to midsize regional banks looking back to the area as a growth market, he said.

Legal Services

Expansion also may be a buzzword for the Central Florida legal profession.

Burr & Forman LLP moved from Winter Park into offices in the SunTrust building in downtown Orlando in December that has room for 50 attorneys. The firm had 10 attorneys in 2009 and 28 in 2011.

That growth has been fueled by greater demand in tax, land use and creditors’ rights, said Jim Pratt, a partner with the firm.

Baker & Hostetler LLP, meanwhile, has seen an uptick in its hospitality practice and resort development, said Jim Etscorn, managing partner for the firm’s Orlando office.

Bankruptcy activity is still ongoing, but the firm is doing more loan workouts with banks than it was a year ago, he said.

In fact, the downturn in the economy has created new demands on the legal industry, with more clients wanting to know what fees they are going to be paying up front, said Michael Gay, managing partner of Foley & Lardner LLP’s Orlando office.

Clients want a firm to focus on efficiency and not who is doing the work, Gay said.

“The last thing clients want are surprises, and runaway legal fees can be a surprise,” he said.